<p>The title pretty much says it all, but I need reasons as well! But I'll include some info below about my situation as well.</p>
<p>I intend on going to grad school either for an MBA and/or a JD in corporate law, so business or economics are both good.</p>
<p>Although tuition at USC is much steeper then that at UCLA, my family is willing to pay for the more expensive school (because we can) but it would be preferable to save money, for grad school.</p>
<p>Google this same thing: USC Business vs. UCLA Biz Econ collegeconfidential</p>
<p>There are a LOT of previous threads about this same issue with a lot of extremely helpful answers.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>It might help to look up the courses available for study in both majors as they are rather different from what I remember when I had to decide the same thing. BizEcon is like an econ major that is more applied to business concepts than typical econ theory. You can also do an accounting minor if you want to be able to sit for cpa or go into public accounting.</p>
<p>The business program at usc is a full on undergraduate business program in which you can focus on finance, marketing, management, consulting, or also switch or double major in the leventhal school of accounting which is a top ranked and much more robust accounting program than ucla’s accounting minor.</p>
<p>If your primary goal is law school than I’m not sure there would be much of a difference in the two. Keep your costs down and gpa up at whichever school feels more comfortable to you after a campus visit. If your goal is to work right out of undergrad, especially in something like investment banking, trading, consulting, or some business field where you need a couple years of solid work experience for that MBA application, then usc might have the edge for the superior business/accounting recruiting and alumni networking.</p>
<p>Thanks for the response!</p>
<p>I will look at other threads soon after this.</p>
<p>Your last paragraph is pretty much my view at the moment, and I’m wondering if USC would give me much, if not any, of an advantage given its more expensive tuition.</p>
<p>I initially thought that minoring in Business Law at USC would give some sort of advantage, but I read the description for Business Economics at UCLA and it said it prepares students for graduate study in business, economics and law.</p>
<p>I guess my major question is: seeing as USC’s tuition is much steeper than UCLA’s, is there much of an advantage to go there?</p>
<p>Anything that preps you for writing, critical thinking, and research is a good undergraduate major for law. This is why philosophy, math, and hard science majors tend to score slightly higher on the LSAT. Something to consider though is there is a chance you may decide you don’t want to do law anymore during undergrad so you should pick an undergrad major that is interesting to you. This is what happened to me, I came to usc instead for business/accounting and ended up loving accounting enough that I’m now going to work for a big 4 accounting firm after graduation and am in the process founding a tech startup on the side with students I met here on campus. I’d say if you came to usc there is a much bigger chance of something like that happening because the recruiting is so strong for business and accounting here and they are big on promoting entrepreneurship. The differences you see in usc being private are TA’s generally don’t teach classes, class size is small once you get to your major classes (20-30 people), and the academic/career advising is very hands on. The student quality of life is very high as well as far as social activities, sports, and dining options on campus though. Try to use the search tool or simply browse back in this forum as far as you can and look for threads on quality of student life. </p>
<p>Most people will tell you the same things I did on this forum. Are you able to take a trip over to visit both schools? I’d highly recommend that if you can afford it.</p>
<p>So you would advise taking something like math over business? The thing is, the two things I’m most interested in are math and economics/business (I took IB Economics instead of business), so I wouldn’t mind doing either. But for the sake of grad school, would math be more preferable?</p>
<p>I don’t think I’ll be able to go to LA… but would it be alright if I committed to both schools and withdrew from one? I already did all my stuff for UCLA because I’m already leaning towards it, but if I committed to both and went over to check it out during the summer could I then withdraw from one?</p>
<p>As far as a better answer for your undergraduate major, you may want to check out the CC equivalent for law school admissions which is top-law-schools.com. When I was researching law school admissions a long time ago because of being in an almost identical position to you (I wanted to do corporate finance transaction law), I remember people telling me to pick an undergraduate major I was interested in and would therefore succeed the most in. Though everything I read pointed to philosophy being the best undergraduate major for LSAT prep, I love finance/accounting so I opted for the better school with that combination which was USC. If I had to pick between econ and math, I would definitely pick econ because it is more business oriented and I’d enjoy it more than studying math. The only reason I’d take math instead is if there’s a small off chance you may want to do finance in which case math would be a good major for most financial engineering master programs such as the one offered at UCLA’s graduate business school. </p>
<p>As far as committing goes, yes you could commit to both and then come visit in the summer and withdraw from one however you’d lose the deposit you put down on the school you withdrew from. I’d urge you to do as much research as you can to try to decide on one without having to do that. I’d spend hours and hours reading back a year’s worth of posts on the forums on CC for each school I was admitted to. It might be worthwhile to focus more on quality of life on each campus? Look into all the student organizations, study abroad opportunities for the majors, networking programs that help connect you with alumni for sophomore and junior summer internships(people usually do internships both those summers here at usc as biz/acct majors) and figure out which school will give you a better and more fulfilling undergraduate experience.</p>
<p>eklee311,</p>
<p>First off, a disclaimer: I’m a UCLA MBA from way back. </p>
<p>If you are going to pursue an MBA later, an undergraduate business degree can be a negative in that it is viewed as repetitive in terms of the curriculum, and sometimes MBA programs like to recruit more “well rounded” students. Take that for what it’s worth. However, it seems silly and a waste of money to get both.</p>
<p>UCLA’s business econ degree focuses on finance and accounting for the business part of the curriculum, with no classes in marketing, IT, or operations management. If you find the UCLA catalog online and look at the classes under the major, you’ll see quite a selection. The nice thing is these classes are taken at the Anderson School, and I believe (although I’m not positive) are taught by Anderson professors. You won’t get one of the finance heavyweights like Richard Roll or Bob Geske, but it will be a quality professor or instructor. UCLA Anderson has traditionally had one of the top finance departments in the country.</p>
<p>Finance is more academic than the other business disciplines and more closely related to economic classes like international econ and money & banking. It also is essential to be strong mathematically. To verify this, Google the “Black/Scholes Option Pricing Model”, and you’ll see what I mean.</p>
<p>I’ve heard great things about the head of the accounting department, who not only teaches one of the intro to accounting classes, he makes it interesting, challenging, and fun (if that’s possible). I’ve also heard that UCLA has more students pass the CPA exam than any other school in California. My source on that fact is someone with 30+ years at Anderson; you can cross check it if you need to. </p>
<p>The Business Econ degree is competitive to get into in that you have to have a certain GPA in the major prerequisites (actually it’s a GPA-based calculation) to get in, but there is no limit on the number of students who can qualify.</p>
<p>One nice thing about being a business econ or econ major at UCLA is the econ department has its own career development staff person who coordinates a lot of company/employer functions and interviews. You can use her as a resource in addition to the university’s other career resources. </p>
<p>All that said, Marshall is a terrific business school, and if you’re interested in Law school afterwards (as opposed to an MBA), maybe you want to have the full-fledged undergraduate business experience.</p>
<p>I like the strategy of making deposits at both (sounds like you can afford to - consider it payment for an option struck at-the-money) and then visiting both to see which you like better. After all, it’s four years of your life. If your folks don’t mind paying the tuition differential, you have a lot of freedom to make the best choice for you.</p>
<p>Thank you for your very insightful response!</p>
<p>You say that taking business both as an undergrad and a grad student would be redundant and sometimes work against me, but would it taking economics have the same effect? Moreover, I is Math/Economics good or difficult as well? I’ve looked at a lot of majors and I think these two would be interesting: Business Economics, Math/Economics.</p>
<p>Do you know anything of the two above majors, other than what can be gathered from the site? I’ve already checked, so no need to regurgitate :)</p>
<p>I’ll risk regurgitating just a bit. The math/econ degree is run by the math department, not the econ department, just so you’re aware. Also, I don’t know for sure but I’m guessing the math/econ degree stays away from too much pure theoretical math. </p>
<p>You may not be able to access the career resource of the economics department if you’re a math/econ major, but you’d have to check with them to make sure.</p>
<p>I sat through the business econ presentation at UCLA’s Bruin Day with my son, and I was very impressed with what I heard.</p>
<p>Econ is considered more of a liberal arts degree (which is why it’s typically offered in a liberal arts college at a university), and while some of the content is related to business, you don’t have the potential for the same overlap as you do with a business undergrad/MBA curriculum. The original economics discipline at places like Oxford and Cambridge was either political economy or philosophy, politics, and economics (PP&E), which I think are really interesting majors to pursue if a school offers them. My own personal feeling is that economists (and other social scientists) have tried too hard to mimic their natural science counterparts, and have made their disciplines way too mathematical or model driven. But the sub-discipline of finance lends itself to quantitative approaches while at the same time maintaining its link to psychology and human behavior, which is what makes it so interesting to students.</p>
<p>In an undergraduate business program, you will mostly be taking the same kind of classes as in an MBA program, although someone (for instance) with a strong accounting background from their undergraduate days will obviously start at a more advanced level of coursework in the latter. I don’t have a lot of data points, but the comment that an undergraduate business degree can be a bit of a negative when applying to an MBA program is made with the MBA admissions counselor in mind.</p>
<p>Here’s what I’d do: find out if you, like a lot of other kids your age, are smitten with the Wall Street/finance/investment bug. If you are, next ask if you want to be on the “front lines” (selling, offering financial or investment banking advice), or if you would rather be doing things like building financial models. If the former, pursue a business econ degree; if the latter, pursue a math/econ degree. Or do “both”, getting a business econ degree with a minor in math. I’d also throw in a little computer science for good measure, and make sure you’re a wiz using Excel. Then go bust your hump on Wall Street for a couple years, go get your MBA, and by then you’ll have some great experience and a much better idea of what you would like to do long term.</p>
<p>(A lot of the young “rocket scientists” on Wall Street are actually just that - rocket scientists - otherwise known as physics and engineering majors. Something to keep in mind if you have an aptitude for either of those disciplines.)</p>
<p>If, on the other hand, you see yourself in what people now like to call the “real world”, aka the non-financial world, and you have a specific industry you’re interested in, or maybe you want to work on Wall Street as an analyst covering a specific industry like entertainment or consumer products or technology, then maybe pursue the business degree at Marshall. Remember that accounting is the language of business, and so no matter how boring it may be in the classroom, it really comes in handy afterwards.</p>
<p>Last, remember my previous advice: if you really love one campus and school over another, go with that. You can accomplish either path that I’ve listed above at either school.</p>
<p>Thanks again for another detailed response!</p>
<p>I’ve heard from a number of sources that undergraduate business schools are a joke, unless you’re talking about Wharton or Stern, and that often they are disadvantages when applying for graduate school. I guess this is the biggest fear I have about going to Marshall, as ultimately I do intend on going to grad school. Can anyone reaffirm this or tell me otherwise?</p>
<p>About campuses, I’m heard amazing things about both schools! I have friends at both schools, but it’s difficult to just check LA out as I am in Taiwan… but honestly I know that either way I’m going to get a good education!</p>
<p>From what I have seen, you will get a very, very good education at Marshall. No joke.</p>
<p>Although this is a difficult decision to make because both choices are excellent, you need to make it by May 1. It is not ok to deposit at both schools and decide later. Make your decision by May 1 and move on to getting ready for your next 4 years.</p>
<p>Just to be more clear, double depositing after the National Candidates Reply date is unethical and can cause your admission to be revoked from one or both schools. When you applied to USC on the Common App, you did sign that you would place only one enrollment deposit. I don’t remember if the UC apps also have this clause.</p>